Cheaper fuel cells with aluminum
Updated: 2011-10-28 18:46:53
Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar US Coast Guard preps for Shell's potential Arctic oil drilling News Picks home Cheaper fuel cells with aluminum By Physics Today on October 28, 2011 2:46 PM No Comments No TrackBacks New Scientist Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas are working on a hydrogen fuel cell that uses aluminum as a catalyst . Although fuel cells are a potentially highly efficient power source for cars , their cost has proven prohibitive because they require expensive noble metals such as platinum for a catalyst . Now Irinder Chopra and coworkers have found that if aluminum is treated with a tiny bit of titanium and exposed to molecular hydrogen
The question of whether the OPERA experiment's faster-than-light neutrino measurement is correct is still up in the air, despite what some headlines have suggested. Experimentalists have not been able to establish how the experiment is flawed, and yet theorists have not been able to determine how its conclusion could be true.
A talk about how a helicopter can advance high-energy physics was part of my initiation to my first collaboration meeting for the new muon g- minus 2 experiment at Fermilab. The meeting was a very exciting (and exhausting!) experience. And let’s be honest any collaboration meeting with a talk devoted to helicopters is awesome. From [...]
This story first appeared in Fermilab Today Oct. 10. The 1970s were a thriving time in the world of physics, heralding such milestones as the development of the Standard Model and the discovery of the bottom quark. Now scientists at Fermilab are bringing some experimental pieces of that era back – bubble chambers and fixed-target [...]
At long last, the LHC today ran a rather interesting test of “high pileup” conditions. A quick reminder about pileup: the beam at the LHC (and all particle-physics accelerators) is bunched rather than continuous. Each time a bunch in one beam passes by a bunch in the other, multiple protons can interact with each other. [...]
Beyond smashing together billions of protons and antiprotons over the course of its 28 years of operations, Fermilab’s Tevatron also served as a launching pad for many careers, often in fields beyond particle physics.
Tiny particles are making a big difference in the world of cancer therapy. And SLAC physicists—experts in particle transport—are using computer simulations to make those therapies safer.
At the moment, LHC is setting the pace of particle physics. OK, there are intriguing, unexpected things about neutrinos, which might or might not be real, hints for possible direct signs for Dark Matter, just to give two examples. But clearly, we are all watching the LHC, and with each additional collected inverse femtobarn, hopes [...]
In 1946, founding Fermilab director Robert Wilson was one of the first to tout the benefits of proton therapy. The cancer treatment has since been lauded as a way to minimize damage to healthy tissue while focusing a finely calibrated beam directly on the tumor – an impossibility for radiation treatments based on X-rays or gamma rays. Yet protons were not used within a hospital facility until 1990 with Fermilab’s construction of a particle accelerator at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Since then, the industry has grown and the technology has evolved. Worldwide, 37 centers use proton therapy and more than 73,000 patients have been treated.
Instead of colliding two beams of protons or two beams of much heavier lead ions, as the LHC usually does, operators will try to collide one of each in the coming weeks. On October 31, they will test the process for 16 hours, and two weeks later they’ll get another 24.
: Physics Without Ideology Bite by Bite The search for a theory of everything : satire about bad candidates and gentle fun about good candidates , such as the strand-spaghetti . model 20 October 2011 How will CERN manage the lack of discoveries CERN management is nervous . After having spent 5 billion euros to build the LHC , the lack of discoveries , unanimously predicted by all physicists in the world , is embarassing . The latest internal CERN proposal on how to deal with the situation makes two . statements No discovery is even more interesting than the discovery of the Higgs . It would be revolutionary CERN needs to take more data to say . more What a weak report Since the report is so weak , I bet : that CERN will NOT publish the Higgs results for the first 5 inverse femtobarns this 
This month marks the 50th issue of symmetry magazine, which published its first issue in Oct/Nov 2004. It quickly established its own quirky style with a cover of a little girl in jammies dragging an Einstein bear. 
TweetThere are three fundamental ways science uses mathematics and observations to understand the reality of our world. The first involves developing a mathematical description by directly observations how its components interact. What is reality For example, Isaac Newton developed his law of gravity by observing the movement of planets and realizing that they could be [...]
Theorists gain insight into mechanisms that enhance the available symmetries of various quantum field theories. Published Fri Oct 14, 2011
The 1970s were a thriving time in the world of physics, heralding such milestones as the development of the Standard Model and the discovery of the bottom quark. Now scientists at Fermilab are bringing some experimental pieces of that era back – bubble chambers and fixed-target physics. Peter Cooper, a Fermilab physicist, is heading a new experiment calibrating the classic bubble chamber technology, which is used today to search for dark matter.
An electronic circuit provides a simple analog for a special class of quantum mechanical Hamiltonians. Published Thu Oct 13, 2011
William Atwood, a leading member of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope collaboration, will receive the 2012 W. K. H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics from the American Physical Society for his work as co-designer of the Large Area Telescope, the main instrument on Fermi, and for using the LAT to investigate the universe in gamma rays.
At Bari Conference , after I gave my talk, Owe Philipsen asked to me about confinement in my approach. The question came out also in the evening, drinking a beer at a pub in the old Bari. Looking at my propagator, it is not so straightforward to see if the theory is confining or not. [...]
Under certain constraints, two lattice gases equilibrate when brought into contact. Published Thu Oct 06, 2011
You will change the other World too… Filed under: Computer Science, News Tagged: Apple, Steve Jobs